How McGrath Central Tablelands conquered rural real estate with Realtair

• Key figures: McGrath Central Tablelands – Mudgee’s rural real estate team
• Challenge: Managing compliance and buyer engagement across properties separated by hours of driving, with 60% of buyers based on the East Coast
• Solution: Implemented Realtair to streamline documentation management, enable remote participation, and streamline processes from proposal to auction completion
• Key achievement: Successfully integrated digital tools for their rural sales within 4 days, conducting numerous successful auctions, including buyers participating from overseas

When preparing for an upcoming rural auction, Stewart Adlington, a property specialist with 35 years of industry experience, recognised an opportunity to try something new for his rural team. Looking at the unique challenges of their rural property market, they decided to explore digital options that could help address their specific needs. Within days, his team had implemented Realtair’s digital platform and successfully conducted their first digitally enhanced auction.

In Central New South Wales, where properties are often separated by hours of driving and buyers frequently reside on the distant East Coast, McGrath Central Tablelands has found a complementary approach with Realtair that helps to bridge geographical barriers for their rural sales.

Operating from Mudgee and covering a territory stretching across Lithgow, Rylstone and beyond, Adlington’s team — including Associate Agent Ingrid Kazzi and Sales Associate Mackenzie Andriske — specialises in lifestyle and rural properties of 10 hectares and above — a market where Realtair’s digital solutions have overcome traditional distance limitations that once presented significant challenges for buyers, sellers and agents alike.

Vast distances and remote clients

The distinctive challenges of rural real estate demand innovative solutions. Adlington’s team serves an expansive territory where inspections are typically conducted by appointment, vendors are often absentee owners, and approximately 60% of buyers come from the East Coast.

“A lot of absentee owners, particularly on the smaller acreage properties that might just be weekend getaways,” Adlington shares. “On the other end of the scale, some of our larger, less productive recreational-type properties are owned by absentee owners.”

This geographical spread created significant hurdles for traditional real estate processes, particularly around documentation, compliance, and auction participation. The rural team recognised that their unique challenges might benefit from additional digital tools to complement their existing processes.

Refining rural processes with digital tools

When preparing for an auction, the team decided to implement the Realtair platform. Adlington recalls the decision: “We were four days away from an auction… and we said, ‘No, we’re not going to do it the old way.'”

Despite the rapid timeline, the team committed to learning the new system. “We threw [them] in the deep end, which was a bit stressful. But we did the registrations and we ran it,” Adlington explains. “We sold the property. And then since then we just sort of said, ‘Well, look, that’s the way that we do it.'”

Streamlined compliance and documentation

For rural properties with complex compliance requirements, Realtair has transformed how the team manages documentation and legal processes. The platform’s structured approach ensures all necessary steps are completed correctly, regardless of location.

“It just takes that tyranny of distance away, which is significant in regional areas,” Andriske emphasises. This is particularly valuable when managing property transactions involving court-appointed solicitors or complex ownership arrangements.

Associate Agent Ingrid Kazzi highlights the platform’s efficiency in handling documentation: “The [Realtair] post-auction documentation is a nice digital bundle… It makes life very easy rather than having to scan through pages and pages of stuff and save individually.”

In one notable example, during an auction involving court-appointed solicitors representing a family in dispute, the team could instantly provide evidence of registered bidders when requested. “Having that digitally instantaneous information was super helpful, especially to prove to the solicitors that we were doing what we were supposed to do,” Kazzi shares.

Engaging remote buyers

For a team where many prospective buyers are located hours away or interstate, Realtair’s ability to enable remote participation has been transformative. The team’s experience during COVID accelerated their comfort with online auctions, conducting over 112 online auctions in just two years.

“Many [buyers] prefer participating in an auction with an online platform rather than telephone bidding,” Kazzi explains. “I think that element of still being able to be in the room with the video link up is a huge selling point for buyers. They feel more engaged in being at the auction, even if they can’t make it to the Mudgee area on the day.” Realtair’s “follow” button has also emerged as a valuable tool for engaging prospective buyers who aren’t ready to bid but want to monitor the auction. Andriske explains: “Something that is helpful to the clients that can’t make the auction, whether it’s because they have to sell first, or something along those lines, is the “follow” button is being used a lot by those clients.”

Time savings across the team

For Andriske, who manages numerous administrative aspects of the sales process, the efficiency gains have been substantial. “[Realtair] has definitely saved me time, especially preparing for auctions and preparing agency agreements, because it is all there. It does a lot of things automatically for you,” she explains. “I don’t have to run around and find different pages of documents to get signed.”

This efficiency extends to the entire team. “Whether they’re solicitors or clients or agents, they can sign it wherever they are,” Andriske adds. “It definitely gets the compliant documents back to me quicker… especially being in a rural department where a lot of Stewart’s clients are half an hour plus out of town.”

Breaking down borders

Perhaps most impressively, Realtair has enabled truly global participation in regional Australian property auctions. The rural team shares the story of an Australian resident working in New York who successfully purchased a property in Rylstone — a small rural town of approximately 1,800 people.

“We did conduct a residential auction there, and we had a lady from New York who was an Australian resident, but was working over there for an extended period of time,” Andriske recalls. “She registered over there and bid online at an auction and successfully purchased a Rylstone property. I doubt very much, given the time difference, that we would have or could have been able to arrange the phone bid for her and get her over the line. But it was very, very easy to use an online auction platform.”

Professional presentation from start to finish

Beyond auctions, the team has integrated Realtair’s presentation capabilities into their listing process, elevating the professional experience for vendors from initial contact through to sale.

“We use [Realtair] Pitch for all of our presentations, and I like that. I think it’s very professional, the presentation to our prospective vendor clients,” Andriske shares. “I really like the fact that we get notified when they open the Pitch because it allows us to be in touch with them when it’s on their mind.” And for Kazzi, the seamless flow of information throughout the process is particularly valuable: “It’s great on the platform how, especially if you’re doing a proposal to signing an agency agreement through to auction, that the client details get carried through that whole system. So there’s no double entry once the information’s in and correct.”

Looking forward

The McGrath Central Tablelands team continues to expand their use of the Realtair platform, with multiple auctions scheduled and plans to further integrate digital processes into their operations.

“Just do it,” Andriske urges. “It is just a very structured process. Everything’s in the one spot, which is really handy, instead of going to the briefcase, having to get 10 pages signed and scanned and sent off. It’s just really, really simple, and it’ll make your life as an agent, as a client, so much easier.”

As the team confidently states: “I guarantee your customers, start to finish, are going to have a much, much better experience.”